


running up that hill

by poisonrationalitie



Category: 19 Kids and Counting RPF, Counting On (TV) RPF
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26806789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonrationalitie/pseuds/poisonrationalitie
Summary: Jana's greenhouse fills with steam. Title taken from the Kate Bush song.
Relationships: Jana Duggar/Laura DeMaisie
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	running up that hill

A wet mist fogs the glass of the greenhouse, and inside, the humidity is practically visible. Jana stands by a row of pots, patting leaves idly, waiting for the steam to thicken. “I don’t know about this,” she says, not lifting her eyes, not even turning. She is a master chaperone, a practiced supervisor, and every Duggar child has attempted to hide at some point in their lives. Jana has found them all; crying under the bed, thinking of sins in the prayer closet, shovelling stolen pickles down their throats in the bathroom, fiddling with computers in the dead of night when not even their parents would wake up – only Jana, holding a crying toddler’s hand and carrying them downstairs for a cup of warm milk. You don’t get away with things in the Duggar house.

“I’ll check for you,” comes Laura’s reply, from where she is stacking and unstacking chairs. Waiting. Jana tweaks a petal. Footsteps, and the door opens and shuts. Jana dares to look up. From here, the Big House seems to be melting, growing fuzzy at the edges like a painting. In a rare moment, nobody’s shadow passes by a window, no kids kick a ball down the grass. She can pretend it is a painting, framed by the black beams of her glass house. The green of the roof isn’t a shade she would’ve chosen herself, and the walls are prone to pink or blue staining, courtesy of the explosions made by her married siblings. She can tilt her head and critique it and it’s just being critical of the colours and shadows and highlights and contrasts, not the buddies and the camps and the scripted interviews.

The door opens. Jana jolts. Squeezes a leaf between her fingers, bending but not quite breaking it. Door shuts. “Fog and shapes. Nobody’s around. I think your mother’s giving them a lesson.” She’s learned not to snort or laugh or do anything when she’s not supposed to, to the point that now all she can manage is a slightly breathier exhale. It could be a sigh. She lets go of the leaf, and smooths it out, returning it to its natural state. The way it’s supposed to be. As God intended. For whatever she may not have learned in all the years of training she received, she did learn the natural order; men above women, husband above wife, God above all. She knows the Bible inside and out. She knows the passage proclaiming that man shall not lie with man. She knows that it must be taken at its word.

As she has been reminded all her life, she is not a man.

Okay, maybe it’s a loophole. An attempt to get a good deal. But is that not what her father praises? What her brothers try so hard to learn? If they can use it to save Josh, why can’t she use a technicality for just one thing, one tiny sin that might not even be? Why not? Why not?

 _Because that is a child’s attitude._ She has never been a child, not really. She’s been an older sister since birth, since her brother followed her out. Her jaw tightens, almost imperceptibly.

Almost.

“I’ll help you with that,” Laura says, and Jana counts her footsteps. Only four to reach her. Jana can sense Laura behind her the way she can sense a lying child or the location of a lost toy. Her mouth turns dry. She knows the rules, she enforces them, she practically _wrote_ them, and yet…

And yet. This.

“I would appreciate that,” she says softly. Laura reaches around her, and their hands brush, pinching the same leaf. Jana’s fingers tremble. She fears she will snap the leaf clean off the stem. The glass is still foggy, ad no shapes move outside, no silhouetted brothers or sisters run along the lawn. Her stomach knots. Laura’s breath is warm on her cheek.

“We don’t have to,” Laura says, voice hoarse. “It’s okay, Jana. It’s up to you.” _Up to you._ In the way that only dinner or lesson plans have been, and even then, those were chosen from a shallow pool of options. And, of course, there was never the opportunity for a ‘ _no’._ For her to say, _‘I don’t feel like cooking dinner.’_ It wasn’t up to her. The most she could do was give her sisters a pleading look and hope they volunteered, but even then, it meant she was volunteering to do laundry or change a diaper or bathe someone. _It’s up to you._

They’ve discussed it. At length. In whispers on the plane, or in the garden, or when waiting outside the bathrooms at church for Jordyn to come out and finding that the corridor was empty. It took months for her to even voice that thought inside her head, after minding that no amount of prayer silenced it. Jana’s thought about it. She’s certainly thought about it. In the garden, in the shower, in bed, when her sisters have decided to bunk together and not beside her (it feels too awkward to think about with them by her side, it makes her stomach feel light in a way that makes her worry, and she doesn’t want it to rub off on them, she doesn’t want them to sit next to a boy and only wish she could have a nap instead).

_It’s up to you._ And what does she _want_? It feels like blasphemy. Like a sin, to want something, anything. With Jesus in your heart, you should not want, you should not desire anything other than a deepening of your relationship with Him. He is the sole light, the only food she should want.

But Laura is standing behind her. Their hands are touching. If Jana were not so well trained, she thinks she would probably cry.

“It’s okay,” Laura says, and lets go of the leaf. She takes a step back, and her breath is gone, and Jana’s words catch in her throat. She wants – she _wants._ She _does._ She shouldn’t. She should run crying to her father and confess her sinful thoughts, she should fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness, she should work on her contentment and fill her days with serving until she is too exhausted to ever think again. She should have the object of temptation removed at once.

But that’s not what she wants.

“Please,” she whispers, feeling like a child, like the child she never got to be and yet forever will be, stuck at home. Somehow, she manages to turn around, facing Laura, looking at Laura, and Laura is looking at her. Her heart pounds. One hand swings by her side. She moves it infinitesimally forwards. Laura looks right at her, through her. Jana can’t swallow. Laura reaches out and takes her hand. She’s held hands a thousand times, with younger siblings, but it’s never made her pulse leap, it’s never made her palms sweat, it’s never made her feel like there are a thousand fireworks trapped in her fingertips.

“Are you sure?” Laura asks, stepping closer. Her breath is once more stroking Jana’s skin. She smells like earth and strawberries.

God has made her perfectly.

Jana nods.

Laura steps closer to her, their noses almost touching. Jana could count her pores at this distance. Jana could count her eyelashes. She is so warm, and so real, and her face takes up all of Jana’s vision There is nothing else in the world but them.

Laura leans forward. Jana doesn’t close her eyes. She doesn’t _want_ to miss anything, to look away. She doesn’t want there to be anything else to look at ever again.

Their lips touch.

It’s warmer than she thought. For a moment, the world is still, frozen. Jana can’t feel her heart beating. Perhaps Jesus has called her home at the last possible moment, saving her from sin. If the divine intervention comes, she will accept it. But it doesn’t. Her hands shake, and she pulls the leaf off the stem, and Laura’s hands are light around her waist and Jana does close her eyes because she can feel them burning and she can’t _cry_ while she’s being kissed for the first time. It occurs to her that this is why Jessa wanted her first kiss to be private. It occurs to her that she can now see exactly why first kisses are saved for one’s wedding day.

But it’s not as if she and Laura would ever get a wedding day. That would be ridiculous. A real perversion of nature. This is, too, but it doesn’t feel entirely wrong, her head is spinning too fast and she feels far too giddy and light and like fainting for it to be wrong. Laura presses into her, and Jana moves with her, and it feels…natural. Like it’s meant to be. Like maybe God did intend this, for their lips to meet while shrouded in steam in her greenhouse in the backyard of her parents’ house, with Laura’s hands around her waist like nobody else can touch her ever again.

She doesn’t want anybody but Laura to touch her ever again.

She wants this to last forever.

It won’t, of course, but she _wants._


End file.
